DC Velocity - September 2010

automated systems than their smaller counterparts (see Exhibit 2). For instance, while two-thirds of operations with 100 or more vehicles had formal fleet management programs in place, only 13 percent of operations with 10 or fewer trucks had adopted such programs.

That’s not surprising, says Chris Roy, a national accounts manager at Kenco Material Handling Solutions LLC, a Toyota forklift dealer that also offers a fleet management program. Companies that only operate a few forklifts don’t see a need for a formal program because they tend to keep track of their equipment themselves, he says.

For operations with hundreds of trucks to track, however, an automated data collection system can take much of the pain out of the process. Better yet, these systems contain report generation and data crunching capabilities that make analysis a breeze, users say. “Our fleet management program keeps all the data in a format that we can manipulate to gather specific data upon request,” wrote one respondent, a vice president of distribution for a retail industry company. “It identifies trucks with high repair costs,” said another reader, a warehouse manager in the wholesale distribution sector with a fleet of 100-plus units.

Fleet management experts say the survey findings jibe with their experience. “Owners of large fleets are more apt to have a formal data collection process and outsource maintenance to achieve that objective,” says Greg Martin, president of Anaheim, Calif.-based Challenger Enterprises, a third-party provider of fleet management services. He adds that large companies use this service to ensure compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules that require them to maintain a work-order history for each lift truck.

Matt Logan, director of marketing and product management at Crown Equipment, agrees with Martin that businesses with larger fleets are more apt to invest in fleet optimization tools. “To realize a return, you have to be in a position to make an investment,” he says, “and we’ve been in a period when expenditures for new projects have been significantly limited—if not eliminated. When customers have made this investment, they’ve told us that our system has increased the profitability of their operation and provided a return on investment.”

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